After a very long, tiresome march we camped above a little stream.
Barring our lucky rain this would have been the first water since
leaving the Kedong River. Here were hundreds of big blue pigeons
swooping in to their evening drink.

For two days more we repeated this sort of travel, but always with good
camps at fair-sized streams. Gradually we slanted away from the main
ridge, though we still continued cross-cutting the swells and ravines
thrown off its flanks. Only the ravines hour by hour became shallower,
and the swells lower and broader. On their tops the scrub sometimes gave
way to openings of short grass. On these fed a few gazelle of both
sorts, and an occasional zebra or so. We saw also four topi, a beast
about the size of our wapiti, built on the general specifications of a
hartebeeste, but with the most beautiful iridescent plum-coloured coat.
This quartette was very wild. I made three separate stalks on them, but
the best I could do was 360 paces, at which range I missed.

Finally we surmounted the last low swell to look down a wide and sloping
plain to the depression in which flowed the principal river of these
parts, the Southern Guaso Nyero. Beyond it stretched the immense
oceanlike plains of the Loieta, from which here and there rose isolated
hills, very distant, like lonesome ships at sea. A little to the left,
also very distant, we could make out an unbroken blue range of
mountains. These were our ultimate destination.




XXXVII.